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Partie i aPProches PhilosoPhiques de l’esPace Public euroPéen Part i PhilosoPhical aPProaches to the Public sPhere 21 Habermas and the Mutations of the Public Sphere An Overview within the Neo-liberal Context Gérard Raulet Université Paris-Sorbonne The significance of the writings of Habermas, along the lines of development from Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit to the essays on Europe, resides in the way they take into consideration successive historical and sociological paradigms. Among these paradigms, he places great emphasis on the continuity between the advent of the modern state, nineteenth-century nationalist and democratic processes of identification (which sparked off solidarity among citizens), and the project of trans- or supranational solidarity. To read Habermas from only the perspective of “the end of the nation-state” would be a simplification. Indeed, in his recent works on the constitutional issue in Europe, he only suggests that we should avoid any “reification of popular sovereignty”,1 which is something completely different. However, in no way does he recommend that we completely renounce the integration of the nation-state into a European framework. The challenge here is rather to create European structures which can take over from the state while possibly still relying on it, so that “the citizens of the one affected state cooperate with the citizens of the other affected states in making supranational law in accordance with a democratic procedure”.2 For, by contributing to the formation of this supranational community, “European nations” (here Habermas refers to Völker and not states [Staaten]) “ensure that...

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